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From the author of the highly acclaimed Trieste, a fierce novel about history, memory, and illness Andreas Ban, a psychologist who does not psychologize anymore and a writer who no longer writes, lives alone in a coastal town in Croatia. He sifts through the remnants of his life -- his research, books, photographs -- remembering old lovers and friends, the events of WWII, and the breakup of Yugoslavia. Ban's memories of Belgrade, Amsterdam, and Toronto alternate with meditations on the mental faculties of rats, a depressed arctic fox, and the agelessness of lobsters. He tries to push the past away, to "land on a little island of time in which tomorrow does not exist, in which yesterday is buried." Drndic leafs through the horrors of history with a cold unflinching wit.